Schedule

Merriweather guest conducts The Grace Chorale of Brooklyn in And They Lynched Him On A Tree  William Grant Still (1895-1978). The Chorale is joined by the Brooklyn College Symphonic Choir and Conservatory Singers.

Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor

This program reflects on the Civil War as seen through Whitman’s eyes. As a volunteer nurse in a Washington, D.C. military hospital, he was witness to the many horrors that wars inflict.

Rene Clausen’s Three Whitman Songs and Jeffrey Van’s A Procession Winding Around Me: Four Civil War Poems offers contemporary settings of Whitman’s poetry, the latter with guitar. British composers Stanford and Holst both set Whitman’s elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” with full Victorian splendor. We also present the final installment (over three seasons) of Bach’s six motets, Der geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf. The motet, written for a funeral fits the theme of this program.

Pre-concert talk – 3:15 pm
Civil War Poetry of Walt Whitman
Dr. Karen Karbiener

A Procession Winding Around Me: Four Civil War Poems   Jeffrey Van (b. 1941)
Der geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226   J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
Three Whitman Settings   Rene Clausen (b. 1953)
Four Walt Whitman Songs   Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
Whispers of Heavenly Death (premiere)   Ian Sturges Milliken (b. 1984)
Ode to Death, H. 144, Op. 38   Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Elegiac Ode, Op. 21   Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Anne Matlack, conductor
Malcolm J. Merriweather, Jesus

Christopher Shepard, conductor
Malcolm J. Merriweather, baritone soloist

The final concert of the season, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, features several commissioned choral works that use the poetry of Walt Whitman. The concert begins with settings of Whitman’s poetry by twentieth century American composers Howard Hanson and Gregg Smith. Along with reprises of two Dessoff commissions from earlier in the season, the second half of the concert will offer two world premieres – a commissioned work by Eve Beglarian and Mathew Aucoin’s commissioned choral excerpts from his critically acclaimed opera, Crossing.

Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor

Merriweather performs Three Dream Portraits by Margaret Bonds with organist, Nathaniel Gumbs. The program also includes chamber music for various instruments all in the splendor of the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene.